


Written in Frost

by glimmerglanger



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Between Thor (2011) and Avengers (2012), M/M, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Whumptober 2019, prompt: scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 20:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21042428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glimmerglanger/pseuds/glimmerglanger
Summary: Almost all of the Aesir were marked. Curling patterns spread across their skin throughout their life for no physical reason. One of the old, deep magics of Asgard’s creation moved on them, translating color and beauty onto their skin.Thor passed the years with barely a mark to show. The signs he had were hardly impressive.





	Written in Frost

**Author's Note:**

> The inevitable soulmate AU. So, I’ve been trying to spread fandoms out while writing 29 fics this month so as not to run out of fuel, but this one stuck in my head, so I’m going back to Thor and Loki a bit sooner than I’d planned.

Almost all of the Aesir were marked. Curling patterns spread across their skin throughout their life for no physical reason. One of the old, deep magics of Asgard’s creation moved on them, translating color and beauty onto their skin.

Everyone knew that the patterns matched unto the injuries of the one you were fated for by the universe. Warriors were sometimes less careful with themselves in battle and on the practice field to make it easier for their fated one to find them, appreciative when they took injuries that would be… unique.

Thor’s fated one was not so cavalier. He passed the years with barely a mark to show . The signs he had were hardly impressive. They were, largely, pale blue and white patterns with sharp, spreading edges. They were difficult to see unless he looked for them.

He scowled at a recent patch around his arm - already fading away, the wound must have been healed away, which was unusual amongst the Aesir; usually they left at least small scars behind intentionally - and felt slighted by the universe. Mother told him always that he should be grateful he _had_ a fated one. Not everyone did. She didn’t. She and father had been a political match, neither of them developing any marks on their skin.

But it was difficult to be grateful when the marks on Thor’s skin made it obvious he was fated to be with a coward or a scholar or… Well, he didn’t know. Someone afraid of taking an injury, in any case. 

“Are you staring at your skin again?” Loki drawled, from behind him. Thor flushed, armor coalescing over his skin as he turned to frown at Loki, where he leaned against Thor’s door. He wasn’t looking back. Instead, he was looking down at his arm as he tugged at his sleeve. The arm had been broken, last Thor saw it.

“No,” Thor lied, and badly, and he _knew_ it was badly. It was awkward to discuss such things with Loki. He, like mother and father, had no marks on his skin at all. “I was--”

Loki waved a hand. “Father is looking for you,” he said, only, and Thor sighed and put aside thoughts of his fated one and the marks fading off of his skin.

#

Thor spent years with only small marks, here and there on his skin. He grew into manhood, he went to war, he _almost_ became king, he saw the shattering of all he’d believed true through his entire life, he watched Loki fall into the stars.

It was… much to take in. He drank more than he should have, for a time, to ease the processing of it. He woke, one morning, with his head aching, his throat dry, and his stomach sour. He scrubbed at his face, staring up at the ceiling in… a room. Not his, he was beginning to realize, and felt someone stir in the bed beside him.

He swallowed, preparing to roll over and face whoever it was that he’d taken to bed, and stopped. His hand looked different. He raised it over his face and felt his stomach clench and freeze all at once.

Patterns, all of spreading white-blue, covered the back of his hand and, when he turned his hand, the inside of his palm. He lifted his other hand, shivering all of a sudden, and found it a mirror image of the first.

“Thor?” his bed-partner murmured, soft and confused, as he lurched to sitting. Sleep and the haze of alcohol fell away from him as he jerked at the blankets covering the rest of his skin. There were marks _everywhere_.

He lurched to his feet, dizzy with fast-rising horror. Sharp-edged smears of color curled around his ribs and down his sides. There was a particularly vivid slash across his stomach. One of his legs was almost entirely blue and white.

“Thor--by Odin’s beard!” the woman in bed exclaimed. Thor turned to blink at her and found her expression stricken, horrified. She clutched at the blankets, pulling them up higher as she stared at him, her eyes growing wider and wider as she looked.

“I need to--to go,” Thor managed, covering the marks with armor in a rush of power down over his skin. She had reacted when looking only at his back. He dreaded to think what might be there. 

She only nodded at him, dark eyes full of something like pity last he saw, before he fled her bedchambers. 

He had always thought his fated a coward and harbored something close to disgust for the other half of his soul. But he bore the evidence of wounds aplenty, now. And they left him feeling sick to the stomach.

He did not even know who his fated _was_. Or where they were, or what was happening to them, who was hurting them, it was--

It was _unbearable_.

#

Some of the marks faded, in the coming days. Whoever his fated was, they had access to magical care, though not the best. Not all of the marks went away; some remained, stabilizing with the permanence of scars. Their edges grew sharper, better defined, and, with their increased prominence, Thor could finally tell what they were.

Patterns of frost spread across his skin, just as it would across a window on a winter’s night.

He felt it suited the situation well, for he felt cold inside his chest, staring at smears of white down the insides of his arms, or around his hips, or encircling his throat. If he twisted in front of a mirror, he could see lines of frost criss-crossing his shoulders. 

#

And through it all, through every mark that spoke of pain and agony, _Thor could not find his fated one_. He looked throughout Asgard, turned over every stone, found things hidden in their world that made him ill, but he could not find the one meant for him.

Surely, he thought, his knuckles stinging from a fight he could not clearly recall starting, surely he would have found his fated if they existed. But they _had_ to be alive still. Somewhere. Everyone knew the marks went away when your fated died.

Thor sat, leaning over his knees, staring at his bloodied knuckles and watching frost flow down across his skin, beneath the blood, watching his fated take injuries in real time.

#

Sometimes, Thor stood in front of a mirror until he could no longer bear it, watching marks paint themselves over his skin. It felt like a just punishment, the way it made his heart ache and his throat tight.

He was a prince, a warrior, a _god_. And yet, he could not find his fated, he could not make their suffering stop. He could only watch, as long, thin streaks of frost slid from his collarbone down over his chest, to the exposed flesh of his stomach.

He slammed a fist into the mirror, barely feeling the slice of glass into his skin, and then grabbed the entire thing and threw it against the wall. It shattered in a very, very satisfying way. He scrubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, leaving behind smears of blood that he tasted on his lips, and turned his attention to the next piece of furniture.

By the time mother had found him, nothing in his rooms remained in one piece. He sat amidst the rubble, breathing hard, eyes squeezed shut so he did not have to see the frost crawling all over his skin.

“Thor...” mother said. He listened to her move across the floor, picking her way carefully through the obstacles until she could touch the top of his head. He did not lean into the touch. He deserved no comfort. “Thor,” she said again, soft agony in her voice, before she swallowed, and continued, “your father must speak with you. Heimdall believes he’s found sign of Loki. On Midgard.”

#

The following days were a nightmare, all of Thor’s worst imaginings for finding Loki twisted and made worse, ending in a tall tower, surrounded by Midgard’s finest warriors, staring down at Loki, who lay in a bleeding heap on the floor.

Thor’s side burned, but the blade of the knife Loki had slid into him had, somehow, missed his lung. The tangle of emotions inside his skin kept him from feeling the pain very much at all as he took a step forward to secure Loki, and heard Stark inhale sharply before blurting, “Holy shit, what’s happening to you?”

Thor paused and asked, “What?” But he was already looking down at his body, following the direction of Stark’s wide eyes and--

And frost poured down his arms, the only skin visible with his armor.

“It’s on your face, too,” Romanoff said, shifting a step back from him, her posture moving to defensive. “What is it? Is it dangerous?”

Thor caught a glimpse of himself in the few yet-unbroken windows. There _was_ frost on his face. Around his mouth and by his hairline. He blinked back at Loki, some strange numb feeling spreading through him.

He found Loki already staring at him, mouth fallen open and eyes wide, all the color drained out of his face.

Thor’s ability to think fled him. He moved forward, ignoring the noises made by the Midgardians, dropping to his knees beside Loki and grabbing at the clasps on his leathers. “Hey, whoa,” someone said, Stark, maybe. “That’s, what are you, we don’t do that to prisoners, so--”

He ripped. Loki make a soft, pained sound. There were--there were scars, all across his skin. Scars Thor knew well already. There were new bruises, scrapes, broken things under his skin put there by Banner.

Thor felt lightheaded. Probably because he had forgotten how to breathe. Loki grabbed at his wrist, but his grip was weak with injury. Thor pulled his leathers further to the side, needing to see the edge of Loki’s ribs, needing--

No mark spread there to match the injury Thor took, to correlate to Loki’s knife in his ribs. The realization left him feeling gutted, as though someone had taken a blade and opened him from hip to hip, allowing all his organs to spill out upon the floor. He groaned, bracing one hand on the ground by Loki and curling down, as though he could protect himself from the realization that Loki was _his_ fated, but he was not--

“I’m not Aesir,” Loki rasped, pain turning his voice into a ruined thing. “Thor,” he said, gripping still at Thor’s wrist, “I’m not of Asgard.”

“You’re not…” Thor lifted his head, some of the horrific pain inside him easing. Loki had curled towards him as best he could, lifting one shoulder off of the ground. His hair stuck to the blood on his face. His eyes were wide and stunned. “You’re not--the magic won’t mark you.”

“It won’t.” Loki smiled at him, that wide, helpless smile that Thor had missed for too long. It pulled at the split in his lip and oh - oh, Thor hated seeing him hurt, all the horror and failure he’d felt standing in front of a mirror over the last year pouring into him at once. 

“Hey, yes, hello,” Stark said, from somewhere far away. “Can someone please tell us what’s going on?”

Thor ignored him, ignored all of them. He reached out, touched Loki’s face, the axis of his entire world shifting around, re-orienting. For a year, he had wanted nothing more than to rescue his fated, hold them close, comfort them, kiss away their hurts, protect them. For his entire life, he’d wanted to meet them. And now--

“But you’re still mine,” he said, thickly, gaze dropping to Loki’s chest, to the scars there, the ones he wore as frost marks, even still. Something in him lurched. It felt like a broken bone being set, good and painful, all at once. He shivered at the realization that he wanted all of the same things, still. With Loki.

“It seems I am,” Loki said, and laughed, cutting off into a flinch.

“Wait, whoa,” Rogers said. “Your _what_, what’s--”

Thor could not bear their babbling at the moment. Nor could he seem to stop touching Loki. “Tell me you are done with all this,” he said, his voice strange and hoarse. “Tell me you had a reason.” He found he did not care, overmuch, in that instant, what the reason _was_.

They were fated. And someone had--someone had spent the last year torturing Loki, and, when he found out who it was, Thor was going to--

“Hey, he just tried to--”

“Quiet!” Thor snapped, looking up at the rest, gathered around, for the first time. They held their weapons. They watched him with shuttered, guarded expressions. There could be no discussion with them so close, interrupting at every second. Thor scowled and worked an arm beneath Loki’s shoulders and legs, lifting him, hating the hurt sound he made at the movement.

“Thor,” Rogers said, flexing his hands, taking a step forward, “I don’t know what’s going on right now, but we need to you put--”

Thor shifted his hold on Loki and stretched out his hand, calling Mjolnir to his palm. And he was still worthy, she still came, so he must be making the correct decision. 

“Alright,” Stark said, arm coming up. “That’s it. Look, I don’t know how he brain-washed you without the staff, but you’re going to thank us for this--”

Thor did not wait around to see what he would thank them for. He could guess. He took two steps backwards, to the broken out windows along the wall and, as Rogers yelled out and Stark fired a blast, he fell over into open space.

He activated Mjolnir with the wind whipping past and pulled them away, feeling Loki wrap an arm around him, holding on tightly. Thor needed to take him someplace safe, to tend to him, and then--and then they could figure out the rest of the hungry wants suddenly coursing through Thor’s veins.

That was what the fated did, after all.


End file.
